


Going Through The Motions

by ClothesBeam



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Karuta, Mention of sparklings, oh no my weeb is showing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 02:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7386988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClothesBeam/pseuds/ClothesBeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wing decides Drift needs a hobby (other than sparring) that’ll stimulate him intellectually. For lack of any other ideas, he takes him out to the community centre to see if something will interest him. Unbeknownst to Wing, it would interest him for a very long time to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Through The Motions

**Author's Note:**

> How this went from being a Chihayafuru parody to something actually sad is beyond me... But I have written this under the assumption the reader isn’t a total weeb like me. See [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUNS2RX5olk) for an example of dramatized karuta if you have no idea what this is referring to.

The ability to read old Cybertronian gave one the power to take a glimpse back in time, and to learn from the past, through reading history and literature. Unfortunately, Drift didn’t seem at all interested in the past, or in sitting still long enough to remember the sounds and meanings the complex characters corresponded to.

Wing looked up when the tapping of the stylus on the table only got faster. Drift was staring out the glass door that led to the balcony and offered a view of the fliers who streaked over the city every now and then. His exercise book, lauded as it was by the education department for keeping sparklings engaged, didn’t seem to hold any interest for him at all.

“Drift, please,” Wing said sharply. It had been months and they’d made no progress in this area at all. It was getting ridiculous.

He grunted and shifted his gaze to Wing. That was more acknowledgement than usual. He must be bored. Wing mentally looked up the community centre events, wondering if they should go on an excursion for now.

“I’m sick of doing this. I want to go outside.”

“I can see that,” Wing replied as he scanned the schedule. It looked like there wasn’t much on other than local Karuta tournament heats. “So why don’t I try to inject some culture into you another way?”

Wing stood, leaving the screen on the table set up as it was, since they would only be gone for a few hours or so. “Finding new ways to kick my aft isn’t culture,” Drift grumbled, but followed anyway.

“We’re not going to spar. We’re going to watch a game that helps students memorise classic poetry and idioms.”

“Sounds _great_ ,” Drift muttered sarcastically as he followed him into the hall. Wing simply shook his head and moved off down the hall. If Drift learnt a single character from any of this, it’d be a huge success.

* * *

 

Maybe Wing didn’t get it, but watching nearly mature sparklings playing some weird game he didn’t understand the rules to, and couldn’t participate in himself because he couldn’t read old Cybertronian, wasn’t exactly Drift’s idea of fun.

The room was crowded with pairs of students facing each other, with a field of cards laid out between them. A couple of the pairs only had one card left on one of the players’ side of the field. The atmosphere was tense, even the students watching from the sidelines were leaning forward intensely.

One of the senior knights started chanting a phrase in old Cybertronian. The young jet sitting closest to them snapped up the last card on his side of the field as he barely got the first syllable out, and one of the groups sitting to the side cheered loudly, despite disapproving looks from their elders. But only a few more cards needed to be read to finish the matches off for everybody else.

“I didn’t realise this was the childrens’ division,” Wing said by way of apology. “The adult game is a lot more challenging and involves a lot more memorisation and strategy. I think this year’s champion and runner-up are going to play a special match, if you want to stay?”

Drift already had no idea what was going on, but when he considered that it would either be more of this or more handwriting practice, it suddenly wasn’t a difficult decision to make. “I’d like to see, though I still don’t really know what’s going on.”

Wing tilted his head and seemed to consider this while they watched a pair of knights come out in full traditional dress, once the students had finished clearing their cards away. “I suppose it’s not very engaging when you don’t know the characters or the poems,” he conceded. “But these two are rather competitive, so that alone might be worth watching.”

Drift kept his mouth shut as the others settled down. The opponents finished preparing their field and knelt on either side of the card arrangement. They bowed to each other formally, then they turned to the front of the room and did the same, before facing the card reader and bowing one more time. They returned to the ready position and leaned over the cards, fingers tense and digging against the smooth metal flooring.

Unlike the students, they didn’t get long to memorise the playing field. “This is a little more difficult than the children’s’ version. Originally the idea of this version was to help students memorise 100 classic poems. The reader would call the first few lines, and the students were meant to compete to remember and find the remaining two lines on the field. But things have become a little more highly strung than that since this became so competitive.”

They were asked to settle back into silence before Drift could answer. He watched the opponents tense again. They seemed to be listening with their audio receptors tuned to be as sensitive as possible. The reader said something in old Cybertronian, and then there was another pause. Both players rose on their haunches, and Drift realised the real game was finally beginning.

Seemingly just as the speaker opened his mouth, both of the players’ hands flashed out and five of the cards went flying across the room. The player who had managed to touch the right one first got to his knees and quickly retrieved and rearranged the ones that were still in play. Drift paid closer attention so he could actually see who was faster for the rest of the match. He leaned forward with a frown.

This time the reader managed to get through the first five syllables before the person on the other side snapped his hand down on the card sitting directly under his right hand. He was lucky he’d remembered he had it so close at hand, because his opponent was over halfway towards it before his hand landed on it.

The card was quickly put aside so the next one could be read out. Neither of them moved this time, and the reader immediately went onto the next poem. Drift realised there weren’t 100 cards laid out, so some of them must be dummies.

He was too engaged with the strategy side of the game to notice Wing smiling at him fondly.

* * *

 

Ever since he’d joined the Wreckers, Drift had had a hard time getting to recharge. The only way he could really distract his mind was with karuta. Unfortunately, as fast as Blurr was and as well-educated as Perceptor was, neither of them made suitable opponents. But that didn’t mean he was completely out of options. This had originally been a game for study and memorisation, both things typically done alone.

Drift’s fingers brushed the handle of the Great Sword as he reached into his subspace for the cards he’d never gotten around to returning to the community centre. It would be a flimsy yet viable excuse to return to NCC when he was ready, he thought.

He queued an old recorded reading sequence he had saved to play, even though he basically had the whole thing memorised, so it wasn’t as much of a test as it should be. But it was Wing’s voice doing the reading. He but his lip when the recording started. He’d been recording even as he’d asked Wing to read for him.

“ _But I’m terrible at getting the rhythm correct. Why don’t you just use a tape to practice?”_

“ _I’m trying to make a tape to practice, now read the damn things.”_

He tried not to sob as he laughed at his own rudeness. He didn’t know how Wing had put up with him for even half a second, let alone all day every day.

_“Fine, fine, if you insist.”_

Drift knocked away the first card as Wing cleared his throat theatrically. He was onto the second one by the time he finished getting through the final line of the first poem. Drift let his left hand return to the sword hilt, watching it light up softly as he waited for the recording to catch up.

He slowly made his way through the cards in time to the recording, noticing how Wing’s reading rhythm improved as they went along. Loneliness was a problem he had to contend with a lot in the present, and doing this seemed to emphasise it even as it made him feel better.

Eventually he reached the final card. He stopped the recording, and dropped his pile of taken cards on it, not wanting to hear the end of the sequence again. It consisted of Wing trying to explain how the final card, the poem about the red river, was actually a metaphor for a faded yet passionate love.

Drift let go of the sword and bowed to the front of the room, and in his mind, to his reader.

Why was saying goodbye always so difficult?

**Author's Note:**

> Robots in hakama tho...


End file.
